Backlash
by Revalacy
Summary: Danny Fenton was told that no matter what he did, he couldn't save them all. He was told that there would be some enemies that he couldn't beat. Well, he's sure as hell going to try, especially now that the end is drawing near... Part 2 of The Eternal.
1. The End of the Beginning

_**Danny Phantom**_

_**Crisis: Backlash  
**_

_Author's Notes: Hey guys, I know it's been awhile since I uploaded anything, but I thought that since this story seemed to have some loose ends, I'm going to write it again, this time with improved grammar! I know that as it is now, it only stands as a half-decent bedtime story, so as we go, new events will take place, my spelling and grammar will improve, and more action is on the way. By the end of this round, something epic will have taken place. Since this story was originally written before certain episodes and movies were aired, it's not really considered "canon" in the sense that it doesn't fit into the Danny Phantom series storyline. Several events taking place after "Reality Trip" are most likely to be left out or drastically altered so that they make sense in this occurring storyline. But, I won't waste any more time with explanations. You'll experience the rest for yourselves. Now, as promised, the first installment of the rehash of my first epic, "Crisis". This is "Crisis: Backlash"  
_

**Disclaimer: Danny Phantom © and related characters, merchandise, etc., are not owned by me in any way, shape, or form. However, the characters, ideas, and places that were created by me are my property. If you need or want to use any of them, just leave me a message. Thanks!**

**Chapter one**

**The End of the Beginning**

**

* * *

**

_My name is Sam Manson. My whole life, I had never imagined that I would be so lucky to see the things I've seen. I've witnessed my best friend ascend to something beyond incredible, I've seen the near-end of the world, I have faced the end and lived to tell about it. I know most people would kill to do the things I've done, seen the things I've seen. Some might say I'm lucky. Blessed, even, that I've lived as long as I have walking the fine line between life and death._

_Because that's what my best friend is. Essentially, Danny has become just that: the fine line between life and death. He's something in between, not really dead and then, not quite living, either. He's become so powerful, so much stronger than he used to be. I know it was in him all along, but it fills me with a sense of pride when I watch him fight, because I like to think sometimes, he's fighting for me._

_Our story is a legendary one, but my story is somewhat less glamorous. This story, in particular, is not as nice as I'd like. This story does not have the completely happy ending that we usually have. This is the story of the end of my life._

_This is the story of how I died._

_

* * *

_It had been roughly seven days since he'd seen a hint of blue sky. Instead, the entire city of Amity Park had been treated to nothing but angry black skies and fat drops of rain that fell in a perpetual downpour. As Danny stood silently, staring through the misty panes of his bedroom window into the never-ending gloom of the storm, he allowed his own thoughts to chase one another around his brain. Outside wasn't the only place the weather wasn't copacetic. Of course, having nearly a week straight of rain at the end of their summer break wasn't the greatest way to end the less-than-perfect holiday, but it wasn't the only contributory circumstance that had rendered the dour mood that the teen hybrid constantly found himself in.

Compared to the turbulence in his mind, the raging storm that covered Amity Park was a drizzle. But of course, having killed someone for the first time, two people in fact, one after the other, made Danny more than uneasy. He was feeling twenty shades of guilty and it was starting to show.

Amity Park had been buzzing about what had happened in Maeville. Though most of the details were exaggerating to an extreme degree, it seemed that most of the citizens of Danny's hometown had gotten the general gist of what had transpired, from the disease the media was labeling _Hysteria_ to the deaths of the perpetrators at the hands of a frightened ghost boy. It wasn't really like he'd wanted to kill them. Hell, if he could have avoided it, he would have. But every time he went over the situation in his mind, he found no other alternatives to their deaths besides his own.

Perhaps it was the feelings that he may have been given a God-complex, deciding who lives and who dies, and who is allowed to stay and who must leave the land of the quick, that had made Danny so guilt-ridden lately. Or perhaps it was the fact that for the third consecutive time, he'd let a psycho get the better of him. The first time had been during the ordeal with his alter ego, the wicked Dan Phantom. The second at the hands of Miriana, the crazed genetically twisted doctor behind the _Hysteria_ disease. The third had come at the hands of Jaston, Miriana's boss and companion, who had read Danny so well the ghost boy had felt that he was picking through his brain. He'd never been so exposed in his life, and that made him more than uncomfortable.

From downstairs he could hear the sounds of the TV drifting through the house, something he could vaguely understand as a news program. He strode the length of his room and cracked the door open, listening through the small gap. "In other news, more information about the Maeville Incident has surfaced in the form of a video tape, sent to our station from an anonymous informant. Here we have exclusive footage of the battle between our own Phantom and the Maeville Murderer. More on this at eleven. We now go to Jim with the weather. Jim?"

He closed his door again, now no longer caring about what was coming from the TV.

Danny nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt a jolting vibration against his leg. He quickly snatched the phone from his pocket and flipped it open.

"Hello?" he answered, he slight annoyance and obvious adrenaline rush thick in his voice.

"Hey, you okay man?" came a male voice from the other end, a voice he knew instantly to belong to one of his best friends.

"Yeah, sorry Tuck. What's up?" Danny murmured, suddenly ashamed of himself for having snapped. He couldn't even remember what he'd been thinking about before the phone rang, which he knew didn't bode well for the coming school year.

"We on for tomorrow at Nasty Burger?" came a feminine voice, one that made Danny smile. Tucker had apparently decided a three-way conversation was easier than pretending to be a messenger. Danny didn't begrudge his friend for the surprise. On the contrary, he found he welcomed the sound of their combined voices. It helped to soothe the self-loathing thoughts that burned him so.

"Yeah, I need to get out of this house," he replied, a hint of bitterness laced in his voice.

"Well, when it rains this much, who wants to go outside?" Tucker supplied, the clicking of his PDA broadcasting clearly over his end of the phone.

"I do," Sam replied, earning her a laugh from both of her friends. Danny had needed the slight boost in morale his friends provided. It certainly improved his demeanor, and made living through the dull monotony of indoors living a little more bearable.

* * *

Danny stood in the shade of the tree, sweating what he was sure to be buckets beside Tucker as they suffered through the miserable heat that ensued the rains. It was completely beyond both seventeen year old boys how it could go from pouring to scorching in a matter of hours. Danny could have sworn that it had to be some sort of weather ghost, and even went so far as to check the Ghost Portal every few hours that day. It was closed, and remained as such.

Just when Danny and Tucker thought they were about to pass out from the stifling heat, Sam finally arrived, sporting a long black skirt and a black umbrella to hide her fair skin from the merciless rays of the sun. Danny sighed with relief, and the trio made their way to air-conditioned bliss of Nasty Burger, where they promptly ordered the coldest drinks they could and crowded into their usual booth at the back of the restaurant.

They exchanged jokes and stories as the hours drifted slowly by, the three of them recalling memories of their shared adventures and the hilarious oddities that they always found tangled into their missions. One, in particular, was putting them each into a fit of rolling laughter that only ceased when the three realized that they were no longer alone. Danny was the first to notice the stare of three pairs of eyes, one in particular that struck him as fondly familiar. The gaze of Valerie Gray caught his attention at last and he coughed to clear his throat slightly.

"Hey Val," he said, glancing at Sam and Tucker. Sam's face, though no less filled with mirth as her male companions, had ever so slightly stiffened in her chair.

"Hey guys," she replied brightly, then took a single step to the right to clear their view of her two companions. The one closest to her, a tall, broad-shouldered man with chestnut hair and matching eyes, offered a slight nod to the group as they took notice of him. "Guys, this is Jace and Katana," Valerie supplied, gesturing first to the male beside her, and then to the girl that Danny hadn't noticed yet. His first reaction was one of slight discomfort as he eyed her. Her skin was a milky white, almost to the point of death, he thought to himself. Her hair was a shade of raven that rivaled his own, and her soulless black eyes lingered on him for a heartbeat before moving on to rest on Sam and Tucker in turn. He felt Sam shiver slightly beside him.

"They're here on exchange from... England?" Valerie went on, glancing at the man known as Jace for confirmation. He nodded.

"From Ipswitch, actually," he said, shrugging slightly. His words slid smoothly off his tongue with his very distinctly English accent, which made Danny's left eye twinge slightly in suspicion. Had he heard that voice before?

"Care to join us?" Tucker asked, breaking the sudden, awkward silence that had ensued.

"We'd love to but I'm showing them around town today. You know, taking advantage of the weather and all. See you guys later," she said and turned, leading the way back towards the door and out into the blistering heat.

Danny turned to face his friends with a pensive expression furrowing his features.

"What?" Sam asked, eying him.

"Dunno, I just feel like I've heard that voice before," he said quietly, glancing left and right as he spoke. Sam's only reply was the rolling of her eyes and she immediately turned her attention back to her vegan shake, determined not to give the matter of Danny's suspicions another thought for the rest of the day. Tucker merely shrugged.

The second day of heat was no better than the first, and had, if in fact possible, been worse than its predecessor. This time, they opted to save what was left of their summer allowances and spend the day in the Fenton home, where they lay on Danny's floor, fans on and air conditioner running, praying for the rain to come back. At least they weren't melting when it was raining. Danny took advantage of the silence between them all, produced by the lack of desire to exert any more energy than necessary, to let his mind wander again.

His resentments and fears came bubbling to the surface of his thoughts again. Their sophomore year of high school had not been the best, in Danny's professional opinion. In fact, he hated it more than he'd hated his freshman year, if that was at all possible. For the first time in his entire ghost-hunting career, he'd had to do the one thing he'd sworn he'd never do: kill another being.

It wasn't entirely his fault, in truth. Part of him knew it was similar to a survival instinct, and had kicked in to protect his life. That was one thing, but the raw power that had come out... where had it come from? He'd never been able to produce such large amounts of raw power before, even in the most dire of circumstances. Well... that wasn't entirely true either. It had first revealed itself against his wicked counterpart, when he'd forced himself to use the Ghostly wail against Dan Phantom without training or even so much as a rational thought. It had just happened, like it had always been that way.

But that time no one had ended up dead.

_You can't save them all._ Had Jaston been right? Was it really true that no matter how hard he tried, he just couldn't save everyone? Danny mentally kicked himself. He wanted to kick himself physically for listening to the advice of a serial killer, even if it had been temporary.

And the worst of it was, no one, not even his best friends, really knew for sure what had happened to him. He had snapped, and he knew it. All they knew is that something, somewhere near him, exploded, and that Danny had been fortunate enough to survive the explosion. What they didn't know is that the explosion had been Danny.

* * *

"Nnngghh... hullo?" he answered groggily, knocking the phone cradle to the floor as he fumbled for the receiver. His eyes fell on the clock next to his bed, which read 2:45 am. Who in their right mind called a teenager at almost three in the morning?

He had been sleeping peacefully, dreaming of things he would never dare mention to Sam (nor anyone else, for that matter) when suddenly, the sharp ringing of a phone had seemingly issued from her mouth and the moment had dissolved into a mass of darkness and annoyed confusion. Danny waited for a response from the other side of the line, but at first, there was nothing.

"Hello?" he said again, this time somewhat clearer than his previous greeting.

"_If you wish yet to survive, beware, young hybrid of the ides, the fifth month on the center day the last hours of the world will come our way._"

Danny blinked. "Who the hell are you?" he asked after a moment of silence.

"Beware the ides," the other voice said, vaguely familiar and yet somehow foreign. Danny wasn't nearly awake enough to process it properly. The line went dead a breath later and he swore fervently, throwing the receiver to the ground to join the cradle it matched. He'd been woken up for someone to recite poetic nonsense at him? What sort of a waste of good sleeping time was that?

His irritation persisted throughout the day, marked as the third day of the heat wave that literally clung to Amity Park. It was clearly obvious to Sam and Tucker the moment they saw him that Danny at least slightly peeved.

"What happened to you?" Tucker asked at last, his reply a grumble from a disgruntled Danny.

"Some asshole woke me up at three in the morning last night."

"And?" Sam asked incredulously. Danny nearly asked her why she acted like this was a common occurrence, but thought better of the question and instead settled to explain what had happened.

"He gave me some random nonsense and then said 'beware the ides of the fifth month!' and then hung up on me." He shrugged, still irritated, and folded his arms. "And he sounded like... that Jace guy..." he said slowly, the thought dawning on him suddenly that the foreign tone of the mysterious caller's voice hadn't been in the familiarity, but the accent itself. "It sounded just like him," he said and blinked.

Sam merely rolled her lavender eyes towards the sky. "Figures..." she muttered under her breath.

"And what does that mean?" Danny snapped, his attention suddenly turned on her.

"It means that every time I think some guy is even slightly attractive, you find reasons to hate him!" she shot back. At this, he was taken aback, staring at her with a mixture of anger and surprise.

"You did that with Gregor-"

"Who was a fake!"

"-and with Michael-"

"Who was working for Jaston AND sold us out!"

"-and now with Jace!"

"Yeah, because he called me in the middle of the night and started reciting poetry at me!"

Through their exchange, Tucker remained silent, watching as the quarrel unfolded. The tension was palpable, and so he took the opportunity to excuse himself to the kitchen, where the smell of food and Maddie's cooking was waiting for someone to welcome them in.

Sam threw her hands up in frustration. "See? You'll find any excuse to knock some guy that takes the attention away from you!"

"What the hell are you talking about? We talked to the guy for maybe thirty seconds!"

"Yeah, but he's got Val's attention!"

"Val?" Danny repeated, again surprised. "What does this have to do with Valerie?"

She let out a frustrated groan. "Honestly Danny, you're so thick sometimes!" she said and stormed from the room. Danny stood there, bewildered, now suddenly unsure of what had just happened.

* * *

_T3KN0G33K says: Hey Sam, you okay?_

_GothgirlManson says: I'm fine, Tuck_

_T3KN0G33K says: You sure? You and Danny had a pretty ugly fight today_

_GothgirlManson says: Really, I'm fine_

_GothgirlManson says: Hey, you know with what happened in maeville... do you know what happened to Danny? He hasnt been the same since_

_T3KN0G33K says: No idea. Why?_

_GothgirlManson says: Well... he changed. Just tryin to figure out if it was for the better_

_[GothgirlManson has logged out]_

_

* * *

_

"Welcome to your Junior year of high school, students!" the man at the front of the room said brightly. "I will be your English teacher this year, and I hope that my knowledge will help you in the years ahead. My name," he turned and with an expo marker and wrote his name on the board, "is Vlad Masters. You are to call me Mr. Masters. I will also be your home room teacher. Bring all questions, comments, or concerns to me." He turned to face the class once more, now positively beaming.

Danny slammed his head on his desk. This was going to be the worst school year _ever_. Not only did he have to contend with ghosts, his conscience, whatever instability was going on inside him, and Dash, but now Vlad? This was begging for Danny to lose his already-tormented mind. Vlad's eyes lingered on Danny for a moment, in which the pair locked eyes and exchanged equally heated looks of utmost loathing. If Danny hadn't been consciously monitoring his ghost energies, he knew his eyes would have flashed to green.

The situation with his classes were only a _slight_ improvement to having Vlad as an English teacher. Sam and Tucker were in all of his classes, but that didn't stop the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach when he saw who else accompanied them in class each and every day. Dash and three other football players were in his first period English class, along with the suspicious English boy Jace and his unsettling sister, Valerie, and Paulina.

Next was biology with Gary, the captain of the chess club, the entire A.V. club, and a cluster of giggling cheerleaders. Not only that, but he was seated across the room from his two friends, right next to Professor Stark's desk. He supposed it wasn't all bad. At least he didn't have to contend with the football team attempting to toss beakers of corrosive liquids at him or leaving bits of flammable materials next to his Bunsen burner, but the conversation was infinitely less exciting.

Third hour was Geometry with Valerie, which he didn't mind. He did, however, mind having to deal with the better part of the football and basketball teams, three golfers, and the stamp club. Danny did praise the powers that be for the lack of toxic chemicals that they could be tossing over his head or combustibles to use for "practical jokes" when class became too dull for them. It was around then that Danny had learned that whoever had coined the term "practical joke" should have been strung up and whipped for such an inappropriate and misleading term for such an embarrassing trick.

Fourth and fifth hours, study hall and History, were miraculously free of unwanted classmates.

Sixth and Seventh, however, made up for that fact and then some. Dash, Gary, the entire drama club, Jace, Katana, and the entire cheerleading squad plagued him during both Gym class and Journalism. He still wasn't sure how Sam had talked him into taking Journalism in the first place, but he found that another hour of listening Mr. Lancer's lectures was a decent alternative to what he might have taken (the only other classes left available being drama and religious studies, neither of which he fancied in the least).

Danny didn't think it could have been any worse if he'd started dancing on rusty nails instead. At least he could phase through those.

As he had predicted, school was a living hell. He was tormented worse than the previous two years, and barely had the energy to restrain himself from tackling Dash and hitting him in the face repeatedly with a blunt object... or his fist, which worked equally as well. He sat every day directly in front of Dash and Kwan, seething and narrowly avoiding flying debris and the occasional punch to the back of the head. If he was this close to breaking after only two weeks, he didn't want to know how bad it was going to be by the time two months rolled around.

His situation with Sam didn't make matters any better. After their fight, nothing had really gotten any better. It was hard to resolve a conflict when neither of the involved parties wanted to speak to one another. It wasn't to say that Danny didn't want to talk to Sam, but he really was too ashamed that their relationship had reached a point where he was snapping at her for things that now, he wasn't even sure mattered. She was distant now, too, as though he had poked her with a hot metal stick and she was quite unwilling to be burned yet again. He didn't really blame her, and yet he couldn't help but be angry at her. Did she really think that he was so selfish that he hated all of her boyfriends?

It was about then that Danny realized that he was still in class, and that everyone in the room was staring at him. He glanced down quickly to make sure that he was still wearing pants, and then looked around to see exactly why they were staring at him.

"Do you plan to answer the question, Daniel?" Vlad inquired flatly, staring at him with a mixture of smug condescension and annoyance plastered on his face. Danny blinked, realizing that he'd been drifting off in English, which he quite honestly didn't remember attending, and at last he shrugged.

"Umm... B?" he said, and the class erupted in laughter. Vlad shook his head.

Danny might have returned to his silent brooding, but he could see his own breath. His eyes went round for a second as he looked up at Vlad, who had turned again to face the board. Two small streams of red steam issued almost unnoticed from his nostrils, and he glanced back at Danny for a fraction of a second. The ghost boy only shrugged, seemingly just as confused as the older hybrid.

Dash was still snickering behind him, and was making it very difficult for Danny to concentrate when he had such an infuriating laugh. He had almost begun to turn when the snickering stopped abruptly, replaced by ragged breathing and the sound of strained gurgling.

Danny whirled around in his chair, and watched in frozen horror as Dash's constricted body suddenly began to convulse violently. To onlookers, it was almost as though someone where shaking him savagely by the throat. Danny might have been reminded of a cartoon he'd watched as a kid if the circumstances weren't so dire. His body found feeling again and he lurched up from his chair, placing his hands on Dash's shoulders in an attempt to steady him.

"C'mon Dash, snap out of it!" he shouted, trying to hold the larger teen still. Without obviously using his ghost powers, this proved to be a difficult feat.

At last his body froze again, Dash's eyes locked on Danny's with a mix of pain and pleading glazing the reddening orbs. Danny's brow furrowed with helplessness as finally Dash slumped forward in his desk, his head colliding violently with the wood surface. He was still once more.

Something red oozed from him, spreading smoothly across the desk and leaking slowly to the floor. Danny took a step back, hands shaking, looking around at the other students to make sure he hadn't just been seeing things, that he hadn't snapped. Their looks of frozen horror couldn't be torn away from Dash.

He was dead.

_You can't save them all..._


	2. The Difference Is In The Incisors

_**Danny Phantom:**_

_**Crisis: Backlash**_

_Author's Notes: Hey there, back again with chapter 2 of the re-write. Not really much to say, so I won't waste much time before getting into the story. From here on out, things from the original story may be spotted here and there, but most of the details are going to be very different, so keep reading on. You'll be surprised if you leave it up to "I read that last time." Anyways, I'd love to hear some feedback, so any reviews are welcome. I won't keep you any longer, so here you have Chapter Two of Backlash.  
_

**Chapter Two:**

**The Difference Is In The Incisors  
**

* * *

Danny, for one, wasn't sure if it was very good luck or very bad luck what had just happened. Not that Dash had just dropped dead in the middle of class. That didn't qualify as luck at all. It was bad, no question about it. What Danny was wondering about was far from Dash's expiration itself, but more along the lines of the fact that two weeks into the term, all of the students had just been sent home. What Danny found to be funny was not the fact that all students had been sent home, but the ghosts were not even a suspect in the murder yet. They believed the culprit to be something _much_ smaller.

So the students would not be allowed to return to the school until after a medical evaluation was completed for every student that Dash had ever come into contact with and a 40-day quarantine of the school building itself. Not returning to school didn't really bother him. It was more the medical exam that would. He knew he'd probably be able to pass his examination easily, but what concerned him is that if the doctor noticed that his body temperature was lower when ghosts were about, someone was going to start asking questions. He only hoped they'd stay away for awhile.

After Dash had dropped dead in class, the entire student body had been sent to the gym, where they awaited instructions. Most of them had no idea what had happened at first, but the news spread like wildfire, so it only took roughly fifteen minutes for the panic that Danny knew to be inevitable to start. Suddenly students were crying or shouting, some of them terrified, some of them angry, and all of them shocked. Danny expected no less of the regular students. He was, however, surprised to find that Jace was just as fear-inspired as the rest of the students. The two had been crammed together by the immense throng of teenagers that pushed their way into the gym aside their classmates.

"You alright?" Danny asked awkwardly, seeing how pale the other looked. Jace only nodded, unable to find his voice.

The loudspeakers in the gym crackled to life. "ALL STUDENTS ARE TO REMAIN CALM," the voice of the principal commanded. An eerie hush settled over the crowd. "Students are to proceed through a medical evaluation and then sent home if the evaluation is good. No classes will be held until after a forty-day quarantine period. Parents are being called right now. Please remain calm through this ordeal, and move towards the doors in an orderly fashion. Make single-file lines at the examination stations, and once complete, move quickly to keep the lines going. Thank you, that is all."

Slowly, like a herd of cattle, the students began moving towards the doors. Danny queued up in front of Sam and Tucker, who looked around to make sure they weren't being listened in on and whispered, "Danny, did you see your breath?"

Danny didn't respond, simply nodding in reply and fixing his eyes nervously on the man wearing the latex gloves. Sam heard him gulp. She and Tucker whispered to one another, trying to brainstorm a way for Danny's temperature to rise again before he reached the front of the line. They moved slowly but steadily, each student taking his or her turn being poked and prodded by "medical professionals" while the students behind them wondering if Dash's horrible disease had been contagious. Paulina had been sobbing hysterically when she'd heard the news, having had his tongue quite near her own only an hour before his death.

Fortunately for her, she'd come off as clean, and had promptly pulled herself together. She did have appearances to keep, after all.

Danny wasn't sure his diagnosis would be quite as clean.

"How do you usually get rid of it?" Tucker hissed, eying the examiner warily.

"It just happens over time, or if I get rid of all the cold at once. I really don't have that luxury right now," he added, glancing around and chewing his lip.

Time was running short. "Do something!" Tucker hissed at Sam as he stepped forward. She bounced on her heals for a moment. "Hey doc, how's it going?" he asked, rather loudly, attempting to stall for time.

Without thinking, Sam grabbed Danny by the shoulders, jerked him to face her, and stepped forward, pressing herself into him. Shock was the only thing on Danny's mind as he felt her lips connect with his. It lasted for what felt like eternity, and for a moment, he almost prayed that it wouldn't end. It wasn't exactly something he'd want to broadcast to his friends, or peers for that matter.

"Hey, no kissing in the line!" the medical examiner snapped, and rolled his eyes as Danny stumbled into the station. "Jeez kid, wait 'til you get home," he said, and crammed a fresh thermometer into Danny's mouth. "Good lord, a little hot aren't we?" he asked redundantly. He glanced at the teenager, then back to the line where Sam stood, bright red and trying to explain herself to the group of girls who'd started giggling behind her. "I get it, I get it, just try to keep it PG until you get to your room and make sure you wrap it up tight." He dropped a small brown paper bag into Danny's lap and scooted him out of the station.

"What's that?" Tucker asked, pointing. Danny said nothing, only growled and crammed it into his pocket.

"Can we go before this gets any more awkward?" he muttered as Sam arrived to join them.

* * *

"Now remember, Jazz is in charge. You guys know the rules. No loud parties, no citations, and no using the Ops center," Maddie said as she dragged an over-laden suitcase down the stairs. Danny stood at the bottom, arms folded and listening as his mother spoke. "Oh, and please don't destroy the lab."

"Oh, and here's these," Jack said as he walked past, dropping a small box into Danny's hands.

"Dad!" Danny sputtered, fumbling with the box.

"I don't want grand kids until _after_ you graduate."

Danny groaned and slapped a palm to his forehead. Maddie pulled he and Jazz into a tight hug and then stood in the doorway, gazing towards them and running through her mental check list to make sure she hadn't forgotten anything.

"Well, we'll be back in about three days if this lead doesn't work out," she said. "We'll be back before Jazz leaves for Harvard."

And then they shut the door behind them with a click and Danny listened as the rumbling of the RV vanished down the street. What a time for his parents to vanish, in the same week as the school mayhem and the rumors spreading about ghost involvement. Then again, that may have been the whole reason they'd gone. Danny wasn't sure. He glanced up at Jazz, who was wearing an mischievously innocent smile as she watched him.

"What?" he asked at last, seeing that she wasn't going to respond unless prompted. "And before you ask, no we're not ghost hunting tonight. I have _no_ desire to be sucked into the thermos," he said quickly before she'd had a chance to speak.

"That's not what I was getting at," she muttered and rolled her eyes. "I invited over a few people to just... hang out."

"Okay?"

"I need you to fix the stereo."

Danny stared at her. "You want me to fix the stereo so you and your friends can listen to your girl bands?" he asked incredulously. His comment was met with another eye-roll.

"No, smart ass. I invited _your_ friends too. Tucker, Sam, and Val are on their way over. Tanya and Gary will be here soon, too."

"So... you're throwing a party."

"No, it's a small get-together. Now let's get working," she said brightly and scooted him into the living room.

"Hey, we early?" came Tucker's voice from the door. Danny laughed at the confused expression he wore, and was silenced quickly by a look from his sister. He set to work, laying on the ground beneath the stereo and toying with the wires. Sam sat beside him, and Jazz and Tucker vanished into the kitchen. When food was involved, Tucker always made sure he was wherever the food was.

The awkward tension between Danny and Sam did not go unnoticed by either one, as they remained silent in their hopes that the other might speak first. Danny might have spoken first but he really didn't know what he should say. He was certainly confused, that much was given. The past two weeks had been filled with nothing but mixed signals from Sam. He stared at the wires in his hand but stayed silent. Danny guessed that the tension between them had gone back farther than just their fight a few weeks previous. After all, it was hard to avoid the awkwardness that accompanied the time after you had attempted to kiss one of your best friends. The past summer had been an odd one.

Someone banged loudly on the door and pushed it open. "Hey guys!" Valerie called into the room, walking in with Jace in tow.

"Hey Val," Danny said from his position under the stereo. Sam gave her an acknowledging nod. "Jazz and Tuck are in the kitchen, we'll be done in a minute," he said while stripping the anti-ecto wiring from the stereo and jerking out what looked like a bottle of grape juice. It crackled to life.

Tanya and Gary arrived quite shortly after Valerie did, and soon they were joined but Jazz and Tucker, who bore large amounts of snack food carried between the two of them. They laughed, talked, played through music and had all sorts of enjoyment that lasted probably several hours. Danny wasn't sure, since he was so busy being lost in his own thoughts that he was hardly paying attention to the others in the living room. He lay on the couch, one leg hanging off and the other bent and drawn towards him, as he stared at the ceiling.

Food supplies ran low between the eight teenagers (except Jace, who hadn't eaten anything but had been sucking down the red soda he'd brought with him), so the crowd migrated towards the kitchen and more snack food. Danny and Sam remained behind, for whatever reason. Danny sighed heavily. Again the silence ensued, and Danny thought that he might go mad because of it.

"We can't keep this up, Danny," Sam said at last. He jumped slightly, her sudden voice snapping him back to reality. She sat beside him on the couch, sitting at an angle and facing him.

"Keep what up?" he asked innocently from his position on the couch.

"We can't keep dodging each other and pretending like our fight never happened."

"Sure we can. It wasn't a big deal," he said slowly, almost uncertain of his words.

"It was, and you know it. I guess... I dunno, something seems off this ti-" she started, but was abruptly interrupted. Danny had moved to sit up properly, but had misjudged the distance between himself and Sam. He hadn't expected her to be sitting so close.

Their lips touched, and neither spoke for a long time, nor moved, nor hardly even breathed. At length, Danny pressed in again, pulling her close and embracing her. She reached up a single hand to place on his shoulder, leaning into him deeper as his tongue explored her mouth. He was getting dizzy, things were becoming foggy and he was losing grip on rationality... there was only one thing on his mind now. He placed a hand on her lower back and pulled her down onto the couch with him. She didn't resist. He was starting to run out of air...

BANG! BANG! BANG! Someone was pounding on the door. Sam leaped over the back of the couch and dashed into the bathroom, probably to fix her makeup, Danny surmised, while he, in his surprise, rolled off the couch and landed hard on the floor. "Ow..." he muttered to himself, wincing slightly as he landed. "I got it!" he called into the kitchen and got up to answer the door.

"Erm... hi Katana," he said awkwardly, rubbing the back of his head. Her eyes were less black this time, but she still didn't look right. "Here for the party?"

"No..." she said, her voice strangled. "I need... I need to speak with my brother."

"Um... sure thing. Hey Jace!" Danny called into the house. The other Liems twin appeared, chuckling. When his eyes fell on his sister, the smile vanished and a grim expression settled on his face. He nodded to Danny.

"We'll just be a moment," he said. "Nice lipstick, by the way," he chuckled slightly and stepped out the door. Danny rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand quickly.

"What was that about?" Sam's voice came from over his shoulder. He shrugged.

"Dunno, looks pretty fishy to me." She nodded, and Danny took the prerogative to turn himself invisible and slip silently through the door.

The tension between the twins was more intense than what Danny and Sam had experienced earlier, and it was nothing good. Jace looked nervous, Katana looked angry, and Danny was very confused.

"You're fraternizing with a girl," Katana stated. It was a simple fact, almost like she just wanted it to be expressed aloud.

"Well I'm no' a puff," he said indignantly.

"You're fraternizing with a _human_ girl," she said. He rolled his eyes.

"Listen, Kat, we've talked about this already. We're not barred from it, and s'long as we keep our appetite in check, there's no problem."

"Are you going to turn her?"

"Erm... no... not unless she asks me to, and even then I don't think I'd want to."

She stared at him. "So you're a blood traitor."

"What?" he said, confusing and exasperation mingling in his voice. "What the hell does that mean?"

"You're a blood traitor and you're going to pay for it," she snarled. "I have a new master, Jace, and this insolence will not go unpunished."

He stared at her, dumbstruck. "Who are you and where's my sister?" he asked incredulously. "Look, I don't have time for this. Snap out of it, I'll be home in a few hours."

She didn't respond at first. Then, slowly, with eyes gleaming in an insidious manner, she whispered, "You're gonna regret this." And then she was gone.

* * *

"Sorry about that," Jace said when he finally re-entered the house. Danny was sitting beside Sam on the couch, flipping through a CD case filled with music and movies, apparently trying to decide what to watch. "Is Val still in the kitchen?"

"Last I checked," Sam replied, pointing out a gory movie that Danny had no interest in watching. He shook his head. The English boy walked into the kitchen.

"So what else happened?" Sam whispered when Jace was out of earshot.

"That was it. It was really weird, too," he said, shaking his head. Jace had returned, looking somewhat confused again.

"Can't seem to find her," he said, glancing up the stairs. Danny opened his mouth to respond, but someone screamed. He blinked, almost certain the scream hadn't come from his mouth but suddenly unsure because of the timing. Sam blinked, and looked up at Jace. The sound had come from upstairs. The three of them, followed closely by the kitchen crowd, bolted up the stairs, an eerie feeling settling in the pit of Danny's stomach.

Something bad was happening.

Danny threw open his door first, while Jazz made her way to her own room. Neither found anything unusual. Sam headed straight for the master bedroom, while Tucker jerked open closet doors. Jace yanked open the bathroom door.

"BEWARE!" was his greeting. He blinked in surprise and slammed the door.

"Do not ignore me!" came the voice from the half-visible man floating through the door. Danny growled threateningly.

"GUYS!" Sam screamed from Jack and Maddie's room. "Guys hurry!" she said. Danny and Jace dashed down the hall, while Tucker and Jazz took care of the floating pest problem.

"Oh no..." Danny breathed as he entered. "What happened?"

"No idea, I found her like this," Sam replied quietly. Jace moved aside Valerie's dark brown locks and swore under his breath. Two holes the size of a pea were punctured into her neck. But she still had a pulse, her breathing was even, and she was beginning to stir. Danny let out a sigh of relief.

"Nnggh..." she groaned. "What happened?"

Jace offered a smile. "You alright?"

"I think so..." she replied. "I don't feel so well."

Jace looked up at Danny. "I'll take her home, then. Sorry about this, guys."

* * *

"Think she's gonna be okay?" Sam asked, pulling her shirt up over her head. Danny stood on the other side of the room, facing the opposite wall. Tucker sat on the bed, facing Danny. "She didn't look so well."

"The holes in her neck weren't exactly healthy," Tucker said sardonically.

"I dunno, I hope so," Danny said quietly. "It's just... after what happened with Jace and his crazy sister, I don't think it happened by coincidence."

"Well, what else happened?"

"Nothing really. She called him a blood traitor, said he was gonna pay and left."

"Revenge?" Tucker supplied. Sam pulled another larger shirt over her head and drew up a pair of black cotton pants.

"Could be," she said, pulling the rest of her hair into a ponytail and sitting beside Tucker. Danny took the opportunity to change as well, and the other two turned to face the other wall. "Revenge for what though?"

"Well, Katana said he was fraternizing with a human girl," Danny said and pulled his shirt over his head. "Could be that they're not human."

"Then what are they?" Tucker asked, removing his glasses and beret and rubbing his eyes.

"I'm guessing vampire," Sam said. Tucker raised an eyebrow.

"Where'd you get that?" he asked incredulously.

"It's not that much of a stretch, Tuck," Danny said, jerking up a pair of blue cotton sleeping pants and a plain t-shirt. He sat beside them on the bed and Tucker stood, now taking his turn.

"How do you figure?" he asked as he fumbled around, half-blind, his his backpack.

"Well," Sam started. "They're not human, and Jace doesn't eat," she said. Danny stared at her. "Don't ask," she said, rolling her eyes.

Tucker pulled on his own sleeping attire and joined them, and the three continued their whispered discussion.

"I dunno, anything is possible at this point. Maybe we should ask Jace?" Danny suggested. Tucker shrugged, and Sam nodded.

"Well, at worst he won't answer, and we can find this out for ourselves. But either way, I think we need to move fast, or Val might meet the same fate as Dash."


	3. Suspicion

_**Danny Phantom**_

**_Crisis: Backlash_**

_Author's Notes: I sincerely apologize for the late update, but rather than spewing off a long explanation, I'll just dive right into the next chapter. I give you chapter three of Backlash._

**Chapter 3**

**Suspicion**

* * *

The ghost tried to slip away, but her grip was that of a tightened vice, crushing down on his neck. It was uncomfortable, almost painful, but it wouldn't kill him. However, that wasn't taking into consideration the verdant glow that trapped him in her tensile grip. He ceased squirming, and eventually turned his gaze - not that there were any visible eyes - on his attacker. Her black eyes focused on where his face ought to be, and she at drew breath to speak.

"You are going to work for me," she said. "I've seen what you're capable of, and I like it. I want you to use that talent in my service."

"And what benefit is there for me?" the poor spirit wheezed through her clutches.

She smirked. "I won't kill you, and you get to have some fun. Does that seem ample benefit to you?"

The ghost pondered. "Fair enough. What do you ask of me?"

Her grip relaxed, but only just. "I want you to pretend to be someone again, but just long enough to put him in _hot water_, shall we say."

"Who, and what sort of trouble?"

"This lad. I want you to become him for a few minutes and, in full view of his friends and classmates, assault and then kiss this girl."

He stared. "Perhaps I didn't hear you correctly. You did intend to say _kill_, didn't you?"

She stared at him. "I believe I was quite clear. Kiss, not kill. And make it convincing, or you'll regret your miserable existence."

He was silent, until she loosed her hold and then turned and walked away. He waited until she was long gone to release a sigh that he'd been holding, regardless of the fact that he did not actually need to breathe. Amorpho was a lesser-known ghost, known only by rumors and reputation for assuming identities and cause mayhem. Generally he was harmless, but this new girl… she intended harm, and he didn't think he wanted any part of it. But what choice did he have? As much as he was dead, he still enjoyed _being_, and was not keen to discover how she might end him if he failed her.

Then again, there was talk of the Phantom living in the place he was ordered to go…

* * *

Danny woke again, still unsure of why he'd been so abruptly and rudely shoved from a pleasant, albeit embarrassing dream even as the phone buzzed loudly on the table beside him. Groggily he fumbled with it and flipped it open, holding it close to his ear and said, "Hello?"

"Daniel Fenton, I warned you before, I shall warn you again. _Beware the ides._"

"I heard you the first god damn time," he growled. "That doesn't make any clearer whatever the hell you are talking about. Why beware the ides and who the hell are you?"

"I have one other message for you. If you are not cautious, death will rise with a full blood moon. Be wary who greets it."

And then there was a click, to which Danny responded by tossing the phone across the room and burying his head under his pillow.

"So who was that?" Sam asked the following morning as she ran a brush through her unruly raven tresses.

"Who wa' wha'?" Danny asked through a mouthful of toast, tapping a few buttons on the panel beside the portal and reading the rapidly-bouncing lines that skittered around the display.

"Dude I'm starved, did your mom make breakfast?" Tucker queried, peering over the top of the laptop which he was presently situated at. Danny nodded and pointed at the ceiling, and at record-breaking speeds Tucker was up the stairs and in the kitchen, earning him a laugh from his two friends in the lab.

"Last night," Sam said once Tucker had vanished up the stairs. "Your phone rang, who was it?"

"Ides guy," he said between mouthfuls, and promptly crammed more toast into his mouth. She stared at him a moment and turned her focus back to the chemicals she was measuring carefully. It had never donned on Sam how much more advanced their hobbies were than normal teenagers. Instead of spending the time off playing videogames or hanging out at the mall, the trio instead would spend their days learning new fighting techniques, repairing weaponry, creating new gadgets, even developing serums and antidotes for the debilitating effects the ghost zone, and sometimes Danny's powers, had on the three human ghost hunters. Jazz might have joined them, but she was away at school, and not due to come back until winter break.

That was fine, it just meant that Danny would spend less time on the business end of the thermos.

It was a small wonder though, that they had become so used to Danny being woken, and annoyed, in the middle of the night by the same person that just using the term "ides" was enough to spark recognition. It probably wasn't healthy, but Danny was determined now, more than ever, to figure out how the caller was connected to the weird things that had happened so far, and how it all tied in with their new paranormal classmates, almost to the point of no sleep. Throw into that he felt guilty for what had happened to Dash, and now Valerie, and he was fixated on finding that final resolution, that truth, that would absolve him of his guilt. She didn't question why he felt that way, only knew that he did.

Sam had a knack for being able to feel what Danny was feeling, now more than ever since their brush with the Maeville Murderer and his strange, psychic abilities. The pain he'd caused her may have been more beneficial than she realized.

He looked up to catch her staring, but only for a second as she quickly averted her eyes and stared irritably at goopy green liquid that swirled around the beaker. _Good one Sam_, she thought angrily to herself. Danny cracked her a smile and turned back to his work, apparently not noticing her staring. The awkward silence remained until Tucker returned with three large plates filled with food, which he began to shovel into his open maw. Sam made a face and turned away.

"Want some?"

"I'm good," she replied, rolling her eyes while he wasn't looking. Danny snorted in laughter. Sam moved her arm to pick up another vial, but misjudged the distance, and the last thing she remembered was searing heat and a flash of green, and someone screaming.

* * *

"So, you wanted to meet up?"

"Yeah… there's something we need to talk about."

"Alrigh', shoot then."

"What are you?" Danny asked him, staring him dead in the eye. "And before you answer," he said, holding up a hand, "I know you're not human. Neither am I… well, sorta. But I wouldn't chance lying about it if I were you."

Jace pondered those words a moment. "Lahmpir," he said at length, his eyes shifting to the window. They sat in the cool interior of the Nasty Burger, in a booth as far back as they could get.

Danny arched an eyebrow. "So you're not a vampire then?"

He laughed. "Not exactly. We're an older breed of demon…" he began, then seeing the confusion on Danny's face, chuckled. "I s'pose I'll explain tha' then. Most things 'round the world are living, dead, or demon."

"What about undead?" Tucker asked, glancing around. Jace shook his head.

"No such thing. If it's not livin', and it's not a ghost, it's a demon."

"But how do you become one?"

"A demon bite, 'specially from a Lahmpir, contains a highly resistant disease. It's so strong in fact tha' it causes genetic mutations in its victims, ultimately leadin' to vampires."

"So wait, if you're bit by a Lahmpir, you turn into a vampire?"

"We're born, no' made. We aren' s'posed to bite anyone, either. Some o' us are just a bit skewed on our morals… and some o' us don' realize the dangers of drinkin a sentient's blood."

Danny nodded. "So, you're a… Lahmpir. That means you drink blood…?"

"Sorta. Our diet consists of the plasma that holds the blood together, an' the easiest to get that is by just drinkin' blood. Usually animal blood, but lately we've been getting' synthetic plasma from Axiom."

Danny nodded. "Have you ever bitten anyone?"

"I'm proud to say I've not to this date bit anyone, but I'm no' that old."

"You're not?"

"Neh, we age same as you."

Danny blinked. "But… so then vampires…"

"Are a corruption, really," he said thoughtfully. "Genetic disease so their chromosomes don' replicate, means they don' age. But they need the new blood ta survive, or they'd wither I guess. There's a lot involved in makin' one, but it depends on what happened to us."

"Like…?"

"Well, if we bite a human, withou' bein' altered, they'll come out a vampire, but if we are, then they'll be somethin' else. Blood exchange is tricky business."

"What do you mean altered?"

Jace thought a moment. "You are what ya eat, is the best way to explain it. If we drink human blood, we stay, 'cause it's neutral blood and nothin' changes. If we drink demon-based blood, it changes us. Actually, if we drink the blood of any beastie, ghoul, monster, demon, whatever, we're in for a change… with a few exceptions."

"What sort of change?"

"If we're feeding on Hellions there's a small change. We just become violent. But if it's say… a goblin, that'll make us more paranoid, and more vulnerable in sunlight. Now if yer stupid like my sister and drink the blood o' a fiend…"

"Your sister drank fiend's blood?"

Jace didn't answer the question directly. "She didn't used to be this way."

Danny nodded. A period of silence ensued, where Jace stared at his hands and Tucker vanished to the counter to order something to stuff in his mouth. Danny glanced over at his friend, then back to the other and said in a low voice, "How's Val?"

"She'll be okay I think," he replied quietly. "For now at least. She was feeling tired last night, but today she's got no energy. I guess fightin' it is takin' a lo' out of her." He glanced out the window. "Where's your friend?"

"Getting more food… again."

"Not the garbage disposal, I mean the girl, Sam."

Danny looked down. "She got hurt today, so she's being held hostage by her parents until her arm shows some improvement. It was a pretty nasty explosion."

"Explosion?" Jace mirrored, arching an eyebrow.

"It was ugly, but she'll be fine," Tucker's voice opined from behind Danny. He sat down with his loaded tray and passed Danny a carton of fries. "The burn it left on her arm was kinda cool though."

Danny rolled his eyes. "How exactly do you classify a third-degree burn as cool, Tuck?"

"I'm just saying, the shape was interesting. Did you see it?"

"I was kinda busy cleaning up blood."

* * *

"Hey love, how ya feelin'?" Jace asked as he put the back of his hand against her forehead.

"Been better," she coughed lightly, and then cracked him a smile. "You know you don't have to wait on me. I can still do for myself."

"Yeah, I know. But it don' stop me from wantin' to help you out. You're sick. An' sometimes it's nice to let someone do all the work for ya."

She shrugged and dipped into the ice cream he'd brought her, slowly working her spoon around the edge of the bowl. He watched her for a moment, a sad gleam in his amber eyes. She was well enough now, but her suffering had only just begin. Weakness would follow, and then fevers and sweats. If the fever didn't kill her, she'd be lucky. Her body would be fighting the virus so violently that it would put itself at stake. He knew if she survived, she'd have earned a period of reprieve from her symptoms, but that would only be temporary. After would follow cold-like symptoms, and then her body would begin to shut down bit by bit. Her legs would go first, and then she'd literally die inside from the bottom up. Her liver, kidneys, lungs, and then heart would follow, and if she survived that, the virus would claim her brain. There was little that could be done, since a cure had never been established that didn't keep the victim alive.

He smiled for her when she looked up to see his concerned expression, then continued to eat away at the frozen desert he'd brought her. He'd really started to care about her. That just meant that since he would be forced to come to terms with her death, he'd have to avenge her as well. She deserved justice, and he knew the place to start.

When he left her to rest, he walked back to the small apartment he shared with the girl who used to be his sister. She was there, sitting on the couch as still as a rock, staring vacantly to the wall opposite her. Jace closed the door behind him quietly, strode the length of the room, and sat down gently beside her on the couch. Her eyes snapped to his face in one quick motion that he barely caught. "Brother," she stated, her gaze fixing on his.

"Hey Kat…" he said uncertainly. "Why're you sittin' in the dark?"

"The light hurts. I don't like it."

"You used to," he murmured. "So… why did you dye your hair?"

"I like it like this."

He arched an eyebrow and glanced around the doom. She'd drawn all the shades, dimmed all but one light, and the house smelled strangely clean… almost bleached. "What did you do?"

"Nothing," she said flatly. "I did nothing."

He peered around and stood, then made his way slowly to the source of the smell, which he determined to be the sink. It reeked of bleach, and another smell he couldn't place. "What happened to the sink?" he asked slowly.

"Nothing. I did nothing," she repeated in the same flat tone. Her voice was eerie.

Jace stood there a moment and then finally walked away from the kitchen. He could tell she'd been tense while he'd been hovering near there. He'd check it out again later, but for now he had to try and get some information.

* * *

_Tap tap tap_ came softly from the window. Sam lay flat on her stomach, sprawled out on the deep lavender blankets of her bed, laptop to her right and a notebook full of scribbles and sketches in front of her. Her arm was thick with bandages. She didn't turn, only kept sketching and said, "I was wondering when you'd come to check on me."

"Yeah well, I didn't want your parents to catch you with a ghost in your room. How are you feeling?" Danny asked, hovering to sit beside her.

"Better I guess. The pain is mostly dull now. The painkillers have helped, sorta." He nodded and glanced over her shoulder at the sketch she penciled quietly.

"Is that it?" he asked.

She nodded. "Yeah, it looks familiar, but I can't really tell how." Her pencil traced the long curve of its ovular form, swirling inside and then lining up and down, almost like the face of an elaborate clock, but lacking the numbers or any discernable relation to time. "It's a really odd-shaped burn."

Danny nodded in agreement. "So, how long are you stuck here?" he asked, then paused. "And are your parents around?"

"No idea, downstairs respectively. Probably until it stops randomly bleeding. You and Tucker are gonna have to hunt ghosts without me for awhile."

"That's the funny thing," Danny replied, lowering his voice. "The ghosts are strangely quiet lately. I don't think I've seen Skulker in two weeks, and Technus dropped off the map. None of the others are hanging around either. It's really eerie how quiet it's been."

Sam glanced up with a thoughtful look. "Maybe it's because of the rumors of ghost murders. They don't want the blame, since they probably didn't do it. Best to lay low so they can haunt us another day."

He nodded slowly. "I guess, but I'm not so sure. The only one I ever see anymore is… well, the box ghost, and he only pops up when he thinks it's most irritating. Someone's planning something."

"Vlad?" she posed, shrugging.

"Could be. Haven't seen or heard from him since they put the school under lockdown. In fact, he hasn't even tried to make a pass at my mom lately."

"Maybe he's the one that killed Dash."

"I don't peg Vlad for a murderer, unless he benefited from it somehow." The sounds of footsteps echoed from the greater hall, and Danny stood. "Guess that's my cue to leave," he said, moving towards the window. He paused, then leaned over and brushed his lips gently across her forehead and then vanished.

Sam was still blushing when her father opened her door.

* * *

"BEWARE!"

"SHUT UP!"

The door slammed and Danny slapped his palm to his forehead. Why the hell anyone would want to annoy him and be crammed into a tiny metal cylinder was completely beyond him, but the Box Ghost had it down. Danny grumbled. He still had the house to himself, so he made his way to the kitchen, flipped on the TV, and began pulling unspoiled food out of the fridge.

"When was the last time someone cleaned this fridge out?" Danny pondered aloud. He glanced at the clock, which read 2:44, and he listened to the steady ticking and the voices drifting from the television. The house was eerily silent.

And then the phone rang, and Danny growled. "Who the hell…" he muttered to himself, then jerked the phone off of the wall. "Hello?"

"Danny?" came the voice from the other end. "It's Jace, I think she bit Val."

Danny paused. "Who bit Val?" he asked slowly.

"I think it was my sister." Danny was silent, so Jace went on. "And I think it's worse than tha', but it's hard to explain."

"Try."

"Well… Kat used to be kinda normal. She was a read-head most of her life, quiet kid but very smart, and helpful. Then she met some guy and went away with 'im to France for a week an' came back with black hair and a bad attitude. I chalked it up to a phase but she's getting' worse."

"Worse how?"

"Well, aside from biting Val? I think she murdered something in my sink."


	4. To Be Forever Phantom

**_Danny Phantom_**

**_Crisis: Backlash_**

_Author's Notes: Well here we're up to chapter 4, and moving along pretty nicely. I've been writing out chapters in my downtime at work, so it won't be long until we get into the thick of the plot. For readers of my other story "Invasion," I will be alternating between updates, so one week I'll update Backlash and the next will be Invasion, so if you're also reading that story, expect another update shortly. I will be posting regular updates on it until it's complete. But I digress, I wanted to note to my readers that this story takes place in a cannon where the 3rd season of the show did not happen, and therefore may actually happen in the sequence of the story. I may through in a few incidents from season 2 as well. That's enough out of me though, I'll let you get on to reading. Here's chapter 4, enjoy._

**Chapter 4**

**To Be Forever Phantom**

* * *

Danny had to admit, the lack of ghosts and attacks had been nice at first, but now it was just downright weird. No hunting from Skulker, no musical tirades from Ember, not even any electrical takeover attempts from Technus. The only ghost who bothered to hang around was not only no threat, but was the most irritating ghost that Danny had ever had the displeasure of fighting. The box ghost had been popping up at all the most annoying and inconvenient of times, and always just before Danny's ghost sense went off. Well that sort of made sense, the box ghost _was_ a ghost.

But there had been something different about his ghost sense lately. Instead of blue, it had deepened to a faint violet color. Either his insides were changing from ice to purple snow cone or there was some other strange power making itself present. Only one thing about it was certain, and that was that it was strange. He didn't have much time to consider the possibilities behind the odd occurrence, because school was set to resume once more in a week and Danny was scrambling to get his homework done. Suspending classes had done nothing to prevent his teachers from piling homework onto their students, and they had done so without care or remorse. Danny, Tucker, and later, Sam all huddled in the Fenton living room, books sprawled across the floor, laptops open and papers scattered as they blazed through their schoolwork.

Sam had only recently been released from captivity by her parents. The burn had stopped randomly bleeding and had begun healing nicely, but had left a rather interesting scar on her arm. Since her skin was fair to begin with it was a little harder to see, but once one knew it was there it was hard not to stare at it. It was for that reason that Sam had modified many of her traditional tank-tops and had sewn onto them a long black sleeve to cover the burn. She called it a new fashion statement, and that only made Danny chuckle, since the last thing Sam cared about was popular fashion.

"So, according to…" Danny began, just as a puff of violet mist issued from his mouth. Distantly he heard "BEWARE!" shouted through a hallway and just as he moved to go and pound his frustration out on the annoying owner of the shout, someone knocked on the door.

"Got it," Sam said and hopped to her feet, then strode the length of the living room and pulled open the front door. "Er… hi… Kat," she said uncertainly. "What brings you… into the sunlight?"

Katana didn't respond. Instead, her cold empty eyes drifted from Sam's face to her sleeved arm, fixing on the place she'd been burned. "You were burned," she stated.

"Yeah… Jace told you?"

"Show me."

"Um… okay…"

Slowly Sam lifted her sleeve. There was the mark, almost exactly as Danny had seen her draw it. She lifted her arm to display it to the girl at the door but she shied away. "What? It's just a scar, it's not like it's still bleeding," she said and rolled her eyes. Katana snatched her arm and examined the burn closely, careful not to touch the mark. Sam eyed her uncomfortably.

"You're tainted," she said at last, dropping Sam's burned arm and stepping back. "You're marked and tainted."

"Yeah thanks," Sam replied stiffly, rolling her sleeve back down. "Anything else you want to make fun of while you're here?"

Danny came to the door behind her. "Everything alright?" he asked, eying Katana warily.

She said nothing, but simply turned and walked away, whispering to herself under her breath when she thought she was out of earshot. Danny watched her go and then closed the door, shaking his head. "She is seriously messed up," he said quietly as he returned with Sam to their positions on the floor amidst the pile of paper and books.

* * *

"Alright everyone, it's time we got into a routine since we didn't have time before," Vlad said while passing out books. "This term we're going to be focusing on improving some of your terrible linguistic skills," he said, glancing at Danny with a smirk. Danny simply glared at him. "As well as improving upon what should be your first language, for most of you. Now, to do this, we'll be focusing on classical works of literature, beginning with some early works, such as Homer, and continuing to more recent and modern literature…"

Danny stopped listening right about then. He really had no interest in hearing Vlad droll on and on about English. To be honest, he wasn't even sure when Vlad had become qualified to _be_ a teacher, let alone why he'd mysteriously given up his castle and billionaire status in Wisconsin to teach high school English to his arch-nemesis in Michigan. It was all very suspicious to Danny, but then nothing with Vlad, or any ghost for that matter, was ever casual and normal. That just wasn't how they worked. Well, most of them. There were a few exceptions, like ghosts who'd become attached to their earthly homes, or ghosts who were looking for friendship (in the form of a pajama-clad ice-throwing giant named Klemper), and of course the ghosts who never dared venture out of the ghost zone.

But now with all of the weird things happening, it was never a coincidence. So when class ended, Danny waited behind, standing with his arms folded and staring Vlad down with a gaze that was unwavering.

"Is there something I can help you with, Daniel?" he asked without turning to face him.

"What are you doing here, Vlad?" Danny demanded.

"I simply enjoy passing my knowledge on to others. Whether they want it," Vlad replied, turning as his eyes flashed menacingly, "or not." Danny glared at him. "And believe me dear boy, you will learn no matter how much you detest it." When Danny's eyes flashed, the older man chuckled. "But I wouldn't want you to start a brawl in the middle of school. I believe you have other classes to attend."

Danny stared at him for a moment then turned. "You're up to something, and if anyone else dies and I find out it's you," he growled, "I'm going to make you pay for it." As he walked out the door, Vlad only smirked in his wake and turned, his eyes dark.

When Danny rejoined his friends, they both turned to ask what had happened. He held up his hand and shook his head. Sam and Tucker's mouths both opened and closed simultaneously, then they followed Danny to his locker. Sam glanced at Tucker, but he simply shrugged. Apparently Danny suspected something, but didn't feel that he could talk about it without being overheard. Sam stared at the floor as they walked, hand over the burn almost instinctively as they went. Normally Danny would be ranting away about how much he suspected Vlad, how he was planning something evil and they had to stop him, but now he was just silent, looking around as though expecting someone to pop up out of nowhere and shoot him in the back of the head. They paused at their lockers and Danny, instead of reaching through it like he regularly did, opened it instead. As he did so, he earned a look of odd bemusement from Tucker and a stare of disbelief from Sam. He shrugged and glanced around again, not bothering to explain his actions until he was positive they were that he was ever sure, but right now he had no intention of blowing anything if someone less amicable was eavesdropping.

Which, as far as Danny was concerned, was just about everyone around them.

He pulled out his books and the thermos, crammed them into his backpack, then shouldered the heavy bag and led them towards their next class as the warning bell rang loudly. "Danny!" came a voice from across the hall, and he turned identify the owned of the voice as they walked. "Hey, sorry about the other night, didn't mean to scare you guys."

"Heh no problem. How're you feeling?" Danny asked as Valerie approached with Jace. He noticed that she was leaning heavily on him as they approached. That didn't look like a good sign.

"I've felt better. I think I caught a bug though, I've been sneezing all day," she replied. "Where are you headed?" she asked.

"Biology, we get to entertain the chess club," he said, almost bitterly. "But hey, it's better than getting lit on fire, right?"

"You mean like last year in chemistry?" she asked and the group laughed. Danny smiled, despite the fact that they were laughing at his expense.

They parted ways, leaving Danny to his thoughts as the teacher droned on and on about how fascinating earth worms could be. His thoughts kept returning to the phone call Jace had made to him the night before, one that had unsettled him to his very core. If the girl had bit Valerie, what did that mean for her? Was she mutating? Would she sprout fangs and try to drain him dry? He shivered at the thought of it. With ghosts Danny was only ever worried about either being crammed into his own thermos, or being killed. But with supernatural forces that didn't come out of the Ghost zone, he was almost literally walking into new territory. In Maeville he'd been out of his element, because he wasn't dealing with the dead. He had been dealing with _real_ people, living and breathing with beating hearts. They had families, children, lovers, sometimes friends. So when he had been forced to do the unthinkable to save his friends, it had hit him _hard_. Not just because Danny had sworn he'd never take a life, but because he knew what it meant to lose someone in a fight, and Jaston and Miriana probably had families that were waiting for them to come home.

The bell rang again before he knew it, and team Phantom made their way to the next class, where they sat with Valerie in the back of the room and huddled together. Danny's secret had been guarded before now, and he still made a point not to change in front of people who he didn't know, but he'd been forced to make an exception to stop Val from wasting him. Their last summer had been a weird one, but Val had ended up being Jazz's replacement when she'd gone away to college. At first she'd been in major denial about his true identity and made a point of contention with him. Whenever she'd see Danny Fenton, she'd poke and prod his arms and face, until at last he pulled her aside and told her the whole story.

Now she'd become a huge ally to team Phantom.

"So, any news from the Zone?" she whispered as she pretended to read her geometry book.

"Silent as a grave," he whispered, taking a moment to ponder the irony of the phrase.

"Except for the box ghost," Sam whispered. "And it's not like his ghost sense has been going off otherwise."

Danny nodded, but neglected to mention that his ghost sense had been changing, and that the box ghost wasn't the only one setting it off.

* * *

_"Trust me, you vill like it," he said to her in a light whisper, brushing copper locks from amber eyes. "I promise." His accent was thick but dreamy, and his voice captivated her almost as much as his dark, mysterious eyes did. She didn't think she would have agreed to this trip otherwise, but she needed to get out, much to her brother's dismay. Well, he still didn't know she'd left but he would certainly chew her out when he did figure out where she'd left to. He was far too overprotective, especially since their parents had been killed by the fanatics who had stalked them for what had felt like a lifetime... and probably had been. He'd been the older of the pair, but only by a few minutes. Even still, he acted like her older brother, and she his baby sister, his to protect. Sometimes it was nice, but now..._

_"Don't peek."_

_She took his hand and followed him, closing her eyes as instructed. Her heart fluttered with elation, ecstasy almost, and with a sense of trepidation that made her tremble. Then he stopped moving and squeezed her hand to signal her to stop as well, then let go. "Now, open jour eyes," he whispered._

_She did, and the site was both alluring and frightening at the same time. She was in a round candle-lit chamber with a single window, where the silver moonlight spilled over the floor like molten silver. The opalescent light mixed with the soft gold of the candle and touched every bit of the prone figure laying sprawled on the floor, making it appear that she was glowing. "It's beautiful... but the woman... why is she here?" she said, trying to overcome the thick Leeds accent that usually hung heavy on her words. He laughed in a low rumble that made something in her chest stir._

_"That ees tonight's meal, pet," he whispered._

_"But... our kind doesn't feed on sentient..." she stammered, but his eyes told her to be quiet. She obeyed, following him and kneeling beside the woman on the floor. She was either unconscious or dead, and she was bleeding freely. The smell was interesting, like a mingling of autumn frost and raspberries, very unusual. But the smell was more than just unusual, because it was almost intoxicating. She felt like she was inhaling a drug, that its addictive properties had already taken a heavy hold on her brain and was crying, no screaming for her to indulge and feed the addiction before it drove her mad._

_"Take a drink, laff," he said._

_She obeyed, leaning down and barely touching her lips to the open wound in the poor girl's neck. It was like drinking wine, but it was much stronger and made her lips tremble. The taste, the smell, it was all so intoxicating._

_"Drink," he commanded. Again she obeyed, this time drinking deeply and fiercely. Something was there in the blood, and it made her want more, need more, than she knew she should have or could handle. But she drank more, gulping down swallow after swallow of the sanguine liquid until the girl's heart could no longer beat for lack of it, and ceased to try. But still she drank, and as she did, her eyes grew darker and darker. The man's smile widened. "Drink," he commanded again, and she drank deeper, until there was no more left._

_She dropped the still body of the woman and scrambled back, wiping her lips and panting as sudden realization dawned on her that the girl had been alive before she'd taken the first sip, and now was no longer so. It pained her, almost made her weep, for the fact that not only had the girl been deprived of life, but that she had just violated the most sacred of codes among her people. What would her brother think? He would surely hate her for what she'd done._

_But the taste had been so amazing..._

_The man didn't seem to care about her poor, guilty conscience, because he took her by the hand, and after kissing her fiercely on the mouth, took into her neck and bit hard and deep. She wanted to scream, but there was no air in her lungs to scream with. And part of her told her not to, for whatever reason. It was still everything she could do not to scream, until at last he let her go and she dropped to the floor, heaving in air. Her chest was painfully constricted. _

_"You let her get carried away," a voice said from somewhere she couldn't see. "The body is useless now."_

_"My apologies, lady," he whispered, looking somewhere beyond her. "I can fetch a new vone for you."_

_"No... the girl will suffice."_

_"But she is dead, lady..."_

_"Not the dead one."_

_His mouth formed a little "o" as he realized what the voice meant. He pulled her to her feet and looked into her now-black eyes, then drew a nail across his wrist and blood flowed free from the wound. "Drink," he commanded. She slowly shook her head. "Drink," he commanded again, holding the bloody wrist to her mouth._

_"No..." she murmured with every ounce of free will she had left._

_"Drink now." This time he pressed it to her lips and she could not refuse, so slowly she began to drink. The warm liquid felt good on her cold lips and slid down her throat. With every sip she took she felt the world around her grow darker and darker..._

_

* * *

_

Danny, Sam and Tucker walked home feeling as though their brains had been violated somehow. Danny, for one, didn't feel that anyone should be forced to learn that much in one day without a week's warning and preparation for the mental assault. His bag was so heavy that he didn't think he'd have been able to carry it properly if he hadn't bad ghost powers. Tucker, who had been able to complete all of his homework even before it was assigned, was fortunate that he didn't have to carry the books, and Sam had arranged for a courier to take them home for her. The poor boy had fallen off his bike once trying to load them into his pack.

But on the bright side, they were finally alone.

"I think Jace's sister is the murderer," he finally blurted out. Two pairs of eyes turned on him and stared at him long and hard. "Well... hear me out before you call me crazy," he muttered.

"Oh believe me dude, she's weird. But murder? You think she's capable of that?"

"Well... after talking with Jace..."

"Oh so now he's suddenly _not_ suspicious?" Sam asked incredulously. He shot her a disgruntled look and went on.

"After talking with him last night I think he might be right. Whatever got into her made her... different. I think she's being overshadowed." The both continued to stare at him, so he took the opportunity to go on. "Well, I have a good reason for thinking this, so stop looking at me like I'm nuts."

"Sure thing, once you explain how she's being overshadowed without you detecting it and what ghost could stand overshadowing for so long without breaking down and leaving."

"Well..." he started, choosing his words carefully. "I don't exactly _what_ it is yet, just that it _is _there. And I think I have been detecting it."

"Explain."

"Okay, well the Box Ghost has been the only ghost hanging around lately, right? Well, whenever he pops up alone, I see my breath, and it's blue. But sometimes when he pops up the color sort of... changes..." he said, pausing when he saw their incredulous stares. "Look, sometimes it's not blue, it's purple. Whenever that happens we usually run into Kat, and the Box Ghost is never far behind... or sometimes ahead." He shrugged and glanced around, his paranoia suddenly surfacing again. Something was tickling at the back of his neck, a feeling that made him think they were being followed... or watched, at the very least.

"Okay, so let's assume that you're right and she's being overshadowed," Tucker said. "What's possibly strong enough to overshadow a _demon_ for so long without breaking down and taking off?"

Danny thought a moment. "Could be a ghost we don't know yet. That _would_ explain why it hasn't attacked or attempt revenge yet if it doesn't know that Phantom even exists."

"I didn't know any ghosts weren't aware of you at this point," Sam pointed out. Danny simply shrugged.

"The zone is a big place, I'm sure there are some ghosts who don't know." He stopped as they reached the corner where they usually parted ways, then turned to face his two best friends and consider them a moment. "Look, this is really bugging me, so can we at least check it out?" he asked.

Tucker nodded. "Yeah, it's worth investigating it. At least if it turns out a dud we won't have to worry, instead of not checking it out and it being something that bites us all in the ass."

"Cool, so Tuck, this weekend we should pay Clockwork a visit and check out his library. This is probably something he'd be interested in helping with if it's not me screwing up the time stream again. And Sam-"

"Will do some checking around the local Goth community to see if anyone knows much about demons," she supplied.

"Works for me."

* * *

"Anything so far?" Tucker asked from the ground, riding parallel to Danny, who was high above the buildings.

"Not a peep," Danny replied. It was an early, quiet morning in Amity Park, so Danny and Tucker made their patrol route stretch to the outskirts of town. They passed a few cars on the way, and once they reached the river, one school bus filled with laughing children that drove steadily along the river's edge, following the turns of the gorge. Danny couldn't stop himself from smiling at their excited expressions, which quickly turned to horror that accompanied the sound of metal crunching metal as the bus smashed through the guard rail and plummeted towards the water in the river below. They all began to scream.

"Danny!" Tucker shouted, throwing off his helmet and dashing to the edge of the road. Danny dove in a black and silver line to the bus, grabbing the rear axle and pulling as hard as he could with gloved hands, willing himself, and the bus, to stop their decent towards the water. His muscles strained, distantly he could hear the children crying as their short lives flashed before their young eyes. Tucker looked down at the water, how rapidly the water was approaching the nose of the large yellow vehicle. "Dude you're running out of space!" he yelled.

Sweat streamed down the side of Danny's face, his muscles strained and his arms began to shake. The tip of the bus touched the water, and then stopped, suspended mid-air and held fast by Danny, who began to pull up and back slowly. A collective cheer went around the bus.

"That was close," Danny muttered to himself, closing his eyes as he gently put the bus back on the pavement and then flew around to the front to check on the driver. The funny thing was, there _was_ no driver. The seat was empty, prompting Danny to scratch his head. "Hey Tuck, I'm gonna run these kids to school, don't want them to be late for anything therapy-inducing," he said with a slight chuckle and pulled the bus up by the roof. The children laughed and cheered.

The mystery of the missing bus driver continued to go unsolved, and Tucker pondered it in his head as he went. A little black cat scurried from behind a news stand and watched him go, then sank into the ground when he was out of sight. _Well that didn't go as planned..._ the little cat thought to itself, and vanished.

When Danny dropped the bus off at the school, he was met with mixed reactions from onlookers. The children in the school yard started screaming in excitement as the bus touched the ground, parents stared with mouths agape, some of them shouting in mixed terror and confusion. Others were cheering. "Phantom!" they all cheered, whistling and clapping. The teacher standing at the door stared, dumbstruck.

"The bus driver disappeared," he explained, hovering into earshot. "Might wanna look into that." He waved to the crowd and shot off into the sky, flying at top speed to his house. He stopped and hovered to the ground, changing back to Danny Fenton part way down and shaking his hair out to get rid of the windburn he'd gotten from his trip. "Alright, now to convince Mom and Dad that I've been here all morning and head off for school," he said to himself, climbing through his window and then proceeding down to the lab.

"Danny!" Jack said excitedly as his son entered the room. "Check this out! I call it my ecto-stoppo-power-o-fier! Great isn't it?"

Danny stared at him, his expression blank. "The... what?" he asked.

"When fired, it prevents any ghost from using its powers... or it will when it's finished," he explained, and then the machine let out a loud _Ding!_ and Jack raced towards it like a child on Christmas morning. "Hey, the Jack Fenton toast is ready!" he said loudly while pulling open a compartment on the side of the large contraption to reveal a toaster, sporting his father's face. Danny slapped a palm to his forehead. He loved his parents dearly, but sometimes they made him wonder if he was adopted. If he hadn't inherited his father's blue eyes and midnight hair, he would definitely wonder. Then again, he had inherited one thing from them, and that was ghost hunting... even if he was actually a _competent_ ghost hunter. "Toast?" Jack offered his son.

"Pass," Danny said with a shake of his head. "I'm off to school."

"Have a nice day at school dear," his mother said from somewhere behind the giant chunk of metal that looked like an over-sized laser.

He stepped out the door and stretched, pulling on his backpack. He and Tucker had agreed to meet Sam at her house today, since she had to convince her parents that her burn was still healing before being allowed out of the house. He started down the sidewalk, trotting steadily towards the Manson Mansion, his mood considerably bright, given the morning's circumstances. That is, until he looked across the street. Tucker waved at him... but he wasn't looking at him. And at the same time, he was. Another Danny Fenton was walking on the opposite side of the street, striding with purpose not towards Sam's house, but in the direction of Valerie's apartment complex. A pair of wings appeared around his waist.

"Dude, hello? I'm over here!" Tucker called at the Danny Fenton who walked away from him. The other Danny ignored him, each pace quickening as he grew closer and closer to the building door. Tucker scratched his head and turned, seeing another Danny blasting at top speed down the street, wind billowing around him. "What the hell...?" he muttered to himself. "Dude what's going on?" he yelled.

"Tell ya later!" Danny called back, leaping to tackle his mirror image before he... it... whatever, walked through the door. But he arrived maybe a split second too late as he slammed face-first into the door and slid to the ground. "Ow... that was... not the brightest idea I've ever had..." he murmured and got to his feet, launching himself into the air. Tucker bolted down the street after him just as Sam closed her front door behind her. She paused as she watched Tucker run off down the street after Danny, who was vaulting himself up the side of Val's apartment complex as fast as his body would allow.

"What's up?" she called after Tucker, sprinting after him to catch up.

"There's two Dannys!" Tucker called back, reaching the door of the complex and jerking it open. Sam slipped in behind him and the pair dashed up the nearest staircase.

"Two? Did his dad do something stupid with that ghost catcher thing again?" she asked, leaping up two steps at a time. She made a mental note to praise the powers that be for Val's apartment being only on the seventh floor, instead of the 20th floor. Even still, it was a long way up.

"No idea, just run!"

Valerie opened her eyes to Danny's face, blinking a few times. "Oh, hey Danny," she said weakly. "You heard from Jace lately?"

He started to snicker and snatched her up by the front of her t-shirt. "No, but I did hear that you're too weak to fight back now," he said in a low growl, a smirk on Danny's face that was altogether terrifying. "So, had a good fight lately?" he asked, and drew back his hand.

Out of nowhere a fist materialized and belted Danny across the face, throwing him into her bedroom wall. "Get away from her!" came Danny's voice, but this one from the floating form of Phantom, his hand ablaze.

"Wait... D-Danny?" Valerie muttered, looking between the two. It was then she noticed that Danny Fenton's eyes were a fierce shade of red, instead of his usual cool blue. Danny Phantom's eyes were bright and toxic green.

"Oh, it's Phantom," the fake Danny muttered, leaping up and away from him as another fist went flying at his face. "I wasn't expecting interference from you..." he muttered.

Danny blinked. "What?" Danny hadn't been expecting that his impersonator wasn't aware of his double identity, and was taken aback but the comment. The fake Danny turned and leaped out the window, shattering the glass and plummeting towards the concrete pavement.

Valerie stopped, looking at Danny, and then at Tucker and Sam as they practically exploded through her bedroom door. "Danny! Val!" Tucker said, looking around quickly. "What happened?" he asked.

"No time, gotta run," Danny said, and jumped out the window after his double.

Sam blinked. "I'm so lost here," she muttered. Val shrugged.

The fake pulled into a flip as he reached the ground and pushed off from the wall, launching himself parallel to the ground and flying off down the street. Danny was close behind him, blasting behind him with incredible speeds. "Get back here!" he shouted, firing off ecto-blasts in attempt to slow his clone down. "I'm gonna tear you apart for what you did!" he snarled.

Finally he caught up, and the other ghost only realized it a second too late as Danny's fist collided with his jaw and sent him down through the ground. He sank through it and rolled to a stop, landing in the Fenton's lab. "Ow... that smarted..." he muttered, and rolled aside as Danny Phantom materialized out of the ceiling and his foot came smashing down where his face had been moments ago. "Listen, you don't understand!" Danny Fenton started, throwing up his forearms to block a heavy punch that came flying at his face.

"I don't have time to listen to fakes or clones!" Danny Phantom snarled, his right fist pounding into the other ghost's forearms and his left glancing off and smashing into the console behind them. It whirred to life. "Now either explain why you just attacked my friend or I'm going to bust you in half!" But before the other ghost could answer, movement caught Danny's attention out of the corner of his eye. With a loud clunk the machine dropped into position and fired before either of them had time to react.

* * *

Sam and Tucker didn't see Danny in class. Tucker had tried him on his phone what felt like a hundred times and Danny never answered. "Dude, where the hell are you?" he asked in a low whisper, staring at his phone. The first part of the school day whizzed by, and so did Paulina as she walked out the door in front of Sam and Tucker.

"I saw the ghost boy today!" she said excitedly to her gang of satellites, all of them bubbling with praise at her apparently novel act. "He even looked right at me," she said with a dreamy sigh and giggled. Sam made a face as though she were gagging. "Yeah, and the best part is that I wasn't late for class from all the chasing!"

Tucker and Sam exchanged identical looks of sudden realization as they pulled the popular girl aside. "You saw him before school?" Tucker asked.

"Ew, why are you talking to me?" she said, trying to retreat to the safety of her popular bubble and away from the toxic geekdom that she thought surrounded anyone who wasn't part of her inner circle. Sam opened her mouth to start slewing a stream of curses that would make a trucker blush at the air-headed and vain latina but Tucker cut her off.

"Look, just answer the question and we promise not to get our germs or whatever on you," he said, holding up two hands in surrender.

"I was walking to school from the coffee shop when he just popped up out of nowhere and saw us. Then he took off flying, and we lost him after that."

"We?" Sam repeated, one eyebrow arced as she stared at Paulina with a mixture of intent and loathing.

"My friends and I," Paulina clarified, not dignifying the question with a glance at Sam, which earned her a scathing glare.

"Yeah, thanks," Tucker said and the pair walked away before she could say anything further. "We don't need to start a brawl with the popular crowd in the middle of the hallway," he whispered and the pair walked out the door.

Sam's house was the closer of the two, so they made their way to the Manson Mansion, and Sam continued attempting to call their known associates in an attempt to find the missing half-ghost. "Hey Val, it's Sam. You seen Danny since this morning?" she asked, while Tucker paced around the room.

_"No, not since he jumped out my window, he hasn't turned back up yet?"_

"No, not yet… thanks anyways, I'll keep you posted," Sam replied, then flipped the phone shut. No sooner had the phone made a soft "click" had a black and silver streak come flying through Sam's open window. "Danny!"

He lay in a heap on her toppled dresser, rubbing his head. "That was not the smoothest of landings," he muttered to himself. "Guys you have to help me," he said and leaped to his feet. "I can't change back!" He was now pacing the room quickly. "I can't go intangible, or invisible either!"

"Wait, the clone took away your powers?" Tucker asked, holding up his hands.

"No, I followed him and we were fighting in the lab, and then this… machine my dad's building, some 'stop-o-power-o-fier' or something like that, it went off and now I can't change back!" He threw his hands up for emphasis and sank to the floor. "I can't go to school, I can't go home, I can't even walk out of here without getting mobbed and chased down the street."

Sam strode across the room to face Danny, placed her hands on his shoulders, and forced him to sit down in the chair beside him. "Danny, calm down," she said soothingly, squeezing his shoulders gently. Part of her might have marveled at how much muscle mass he'd developed since gaining his powers, but that was for a less dire time, and Danny was looking more nervous than she was used to. "Now slow down, and tell us the whole story from the top. Maybe there's a way to reverse this."

He took a deep breath, and Sam moved to sit beside Tucker on the couch. "Okay, so after I chased him out the window we ended up in the lab. We fought, and I guess it triggered the machine, because it blasted us while we were in the lab. Then my parents showed up…"

_"Why can't I change back!" Danny asked himself frantically as a pair of guns leveled at his head._

_"Freeze ghost!" the shouted in unison, making the pit of Danny's stomach sink and his heart to leap into his throat. Never before had he wished he'd been more forward with his parents about his identity. "What have you done with our son?" Where is Danny!"_

_"I wish I knew!" Danny replied, the back of his mind commenting on how ironic it was that his parents were going to obliterate him in his own basement for "doing away with" their son, who they were unaware was standing right in front of them. They fired and he leaped, barely dodging a barrage of plasma that pelted the wall he'd been pressed against and scarred the tiles. He kicked off from the wall and launched himself at the ceiling, preparing to go intangible…_

_BANG! His head hit the ceiling and he saw spots as he rebounded and dipped down, rubbing his head where he was sure he'd split it open. "Great, I can't go intangible either?" he growled darkly to himself and pushed back as another barrage of green flew past his face and blew a hole in the ceiling. Grateful for the exit he zipped through the gap and through the house, blasting his way out the door and taking to the sky as fast as physically possible. He looked below him as the Fentons walked out their door, making a bee-line for the RV. He ducked into an alley and paused, crouching behind a dumpster. "This is bad…" he muttered to himself as the rumble of the RV faded off into the distance, his mother's voice crackling over the intercom. _

_"Oh my god, Phantom!" a voice rang out, making Danny freeze like a deer caught in headlights. Paulina was there, followed by a group of girls who were well known for mimicking everything Paulina did, from her cuffed jeans to the hair clips she wore, it was like staring at a pack of clones._

_"Oh no…" he said, leaping up from his spot and vaulting over the girls. He grabbed hold of a rung of the fire escape ladder over his head and pulled into a flip, launching himself higher into the air and away. They shrieked with star-struck fervor and bolted after him, arms in the air like they might stretch and snatch him out of the sky._

_"Come back ghost boy!"_

_He hooked a hard left and flew off down the street, crashing straight through Sam's window._

* * *

"Danny! Danny where are you!" Maddie Fenton called, turning to search nearby streets as they ran past.

"Oh! Ow… the pain…" came a voice from the alley.

"Danny is that you!" Maddie called, slowing to a walk as she neared the boy who looked like her son… from the back, anyways.

"Umm… M-Mom and Dad? The ghost… he… um… ripped my face off! Don't look at me like this!" he cried, and took off running down the street, not pausing to look back. A good thing too, because then Jack and Maddie Fenton would have realized that they were chasing Tucker, not Danny. As they chased after him, calling for him to come back, Sam and the real Danny stepped out from the shadows behind a dumpster and laughed.

"You're a genius, Sam," Danny commented.

"Thank me after you're fixed, now go before your parents find you… or Tucker." She pointed in the direction of the school. "If that ghost was impersonating you, check the school first. I'll make sure your parents don't catch Tucker." They parted ways, Sam sprinting madly after his parents and Danny rushing off towards Casper High. It had never occurred to him before now how many times he'd been put into awkward situations like these because of his father's goofy inventions, but it was rapidly becoming more and more detrimental to his health and mental well-being.

The school was bustling with activity during the lunch hour, making it almost impossible for Danny to sneak around the lower floors of the school unnoticed. He was, however, able to creep quietly through the upper floors without detection, since most students were busy eating in the cafeteria or out eating lunch somewhere else. So he walked, listening intently to the sounds of conversation from the floor below. Then one piece struck his attention.

"Two Mr. Lancers!" someone shouted. "I can't handle two, I'm already failing!" they cried, and a crowd began buzzing. Without realizing it, Danny's intangibility had sputtered to life one last time and dropped him through the ceiling, landing him in a heap in front of the group of students who stared at him with star-struck awe. When Danny realized what had happened, he quickly got to his feet.

"Oh no," he muttered to himself.

"PHANTOM!" the crowd screamed in unison. He turned on his heal and pushed into the air, flying along the corridor at top speed, swerving around corners as he tried to outrun them for what felt like ages.

"Good, I'm losing them!" he said excitedly to himself after they began to fall behind in the labyrinth of corridors, but his enthusiasm faded as he realized that he was awfully close to the ground. He hit softly and rolled to a stop, then lay there a moment. "Well so much for that power," he said, and just then someone tripped over him.

A bald, overweight man went tumbling over him and into a set of lockers, a man Danny recognized as Mr. Lancer, his former English teacher and his current Journalism instructor. He leaped to his feet. "I'm sorry sir, won't happen again," he said and brushed himself off.

"It's you!" he said, getting up and rushing towards him.

"Er... yes. Is there a problem, citizen?"

"No it's me Bobby! I'm the one that changed into you!" he said frantically, looking around in a paranoid fashion.

Danny's face lit up. "Awesome!" he said and punched the copy hard in the gut. "I've been trying to find you, we need to get back to my lap so we can fix this!" he said, turning on his heal as his avid fans rounded the corner at the end of the hall. He stopped dead and cursed his poor luck and whatever deity was watching for loathing him so.

"What about them?" Mr. Lancer's double said, pointing at the growing mob.

"Run!" Danny said, grabbing him by the front of the shirt and sprinting down the hall. The pair cut around a corner and dashed down a flight of stairs. He didn't remember ever having to run so much as Phantom, and he wasn't enjoying the experience. The double was panting as well, and Danny suspected that Lancer's poor physical shape crossed even into the apparent shape-shifter, because he was panting like the air had been sucked from the building. "There, the doors!" he called, leading the way to the rear exit of the school.

Sam burst through the doors and dashed passed him, and the pair paused and looked back at each other. "Danny?" she said.

"Sam? Are you wearing my shirt?" he asked her, raising an eyebrow.

"No time, RUN!"

Then the doors exploded. Danny couldn't recall ever having so much trouble trying to avoid his parents but there they were, guns leveled directly at him. "There he is, Maddie! What did you do to our son, you rancid ball of self-aware protoplasm?" Jack shouted.

"Oh jeez," Danny muttered with a backwards step, suddenly bumping into the man behind him.

"You're not the only ghost here, you know," Mr. Lancer's clone said with a delightfully wicked smile.

"Wha-?" Danny began just as the ghost grabbed him by the arm and started rushing at his parents in a dead sprint.

Jack and Maddie fired simultaneously from the cannons they both carried. Just then, Danny and the other ghost turned opaque and dove, flying through Jack and out the door, into the air. He shivered. "I feel like I've just been violated," Jack grumbled, and the pair turned and chased after them.

"So you're a ghost?" Danny asked, and the man who looked like Mr. Lancer nodded. "Well that explains how you were able to get into the lab without breaking pavement," he muttered.

"I'm sorry for impersonating you. I didn't realize you and _you_ were actually one in the same… and I was contracted into doing it."

"Contracted?" Danny echoed.

"Well… coerced is a better word for it, but yes. I was found by a girl and she hired me to impersonate Daniel Fenton."

"Did she say why? And does she know that I am… him?"

"I don't believe so. She is trying to minimize interference in… some plan, I don't know what, from people close to her brother."

"Er… so who was it that contracted you? Or coerced you?"

"I never got a name, I'm sorry."

Danny shrugged. "Well, I don't think it'll matter much if we can't fix this," he said. "There, go down through the street right in front of the doorstep, we'll end up in the lab." Mr. Lancer's double obeyed, diving straight down into the ground and through the pavement, and as Danny had said, the pair ended up in the Fenton's lab. "Okay, so we just need to reverse what my dad's machine did. Shouldn't be a problem, he tends to install reversal applications into everything he makes." Danny shrugged, then approached the machine.

The wall exploded again, and Danny cursed his foul luck. Why did his parents only chase him around during the worst possible time? Because they could. If he could still use his powers, he'd have given them the slip hours ago and moved on. But now… well, they were like gum he couldn't get rid of. "FREEZE!" they both bellowed. "Don't move, or we'll blow you all over this lab!" Maddie shouted, shouldering her weapon and taking aim. "Now tell us, where is our son?"

Danny threw clone Lancer into the range of the machine and smashed his fist into the consol "reverse" button and dove as the machine fired again, sending blinding smoke billowing into the lab.

The pair ducked quickly out of the lab and up the stairs, nearly tripping as they avoided running into either Fenton so they wouldn't alert them to their movement. When they arrived at the top of the stairs, Danny had to admit he'd never been so relieved in his life to be away from his parents. "Okay, we need to move fast. They'll be up here any minute." With that he closed his eyes and willed himself to change back. At first he sparked, and then reluctantly a pair of rings appeared and swept him back to Danny Fenton. "Yes!" he said and punched the air in triumph.

"That means I can change too," the ghost said, and melted into a tall, dark figure with no face, wearing a black trench coat and a wide-brimmed hat. "And if I can change, that means I'm everyone!" it said excitedly, cycling between Danny, Mr. Lancer, a duck, a ballerina, and finally back to himself again. "Thank you for the help Diddy."

"It's Danny."

"Yes, thank you for the help. I'm sorry I couldn't tell you more about the person that started this."

Danny shrugged. "No big deal, just as long as no one got hurt. It was nice meeting you… er…" Danny started, offering his hand for the other ghost to shake.

"Amorpho."

"Nice meeting you Amorpho. Just… don't let me catch you impersonating anyone else, and we won't have any problems. Deal?"

"Deal." The ghost hovered up towards the ceiling, then turned, assuming the form of Danny Phantom. "But how will you know if it's me?" he asked with a wicked grin that Danny did not fancy was terribly flattering on himself, and then Amorpho drifted up through the ceiling.

"DANNY!" his parents shouted from behind him, and both drew him into a tight hug. "Aw sweetie, are you alright? What happened to your face?" Maddie asked, her face drawn into a concerned furrow.

"Eh, nothing that couldn't be fixed," Danny said, smiling for his parents as they pulled him into a tight hug, and he wondered to himself about the irony that though his parents loved him dearly, they had just attempted to kill him. At that thought, he couldn't help but laugh.


End file.
